new and starting
 

hellooo guys, mi name is IcemanLife and starting in Linux, am familier with windows clients and servers but have not used linux before but want to start using it, where do i start, where do i download the os and how to i multi boot it with windows OS i have, which Linux OS should i start with, am a systems administartor and am familier with most IT basic issues, thanks in advance for your help, links will be also helpful!!!!

What do you intend to do with your 1st Linux OS. There are many out there, Most of them can be run from cd ( live cd) so you could take them for a test drive so to speak without making any changes to your pc. Ubuntu has a familier look to windows and an easy distro to get on with, A good place to learn bsics and move into the dirty stuff as well. Dual boot is easy as well with linux and windows.

i intend to run it as my desktop OS doing the usual that i do in a windows invironment, am a fast learner so as time goes by need to be able to use commands to do most basic functions in the OS, then when i know the OS fully i can move to server versions and maybe host a major mail application for my company and administer it from linux invironment,

I have only used Ubuntu which has been good to me, So I cant vouch for other distros I did look at others and tried then but found this the easiest to start with. as for learning it can still be run from command line. Hopefully other ppl will mention other distros. Dual booting is easy and straight forward, Theres plenty on the internet about dual booting or even triple booting.

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/cat/508

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DistroWatch

You will find many different flavors of Linux out there, and there is not really a desktop type, since we are able to build it the way we want, because Linux is modular. For starting live cds as mentioned above are a good thing,
just to mention some: Debian Live, Ubuntu(Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu), Slitaz, Tinycore, Archbang, and many others.

If you have VirtualBox or similar software you can run those livecds from there.

If you are planning to run servers then Debian is a good option, it is solid, mature and only work with stable software, it is set to work as a server in its core.

Regards

If you really want to learn (and somewhat be forced to learn) Linux I would recommend to go for Slackware, Arch or Gentoo. All of those have a rather steep learning curve, but are well documented and you will find a lot of help on their respective forums (the official Slackware forum is even here on LQ).